The Link between Sustainable Development and International Cooperation
This study has argued that international cooperation is the fulcrum for sustainable development. First, it has determined that international cooperation impacts sustainable development because it is through cooperation that states can attain mutually beneficial outcomes to address both national, regional, and global challenges and problems. Without international cooperation, states will not singularly achieve their national interests. Simply put, all states are interdependent. Second, the study argued that international cooperation has evolved over time moving beyond the traditional practice of bilateral and multilateral cooperation to now include global governance that involves trans-governmental networks; transnational private governance; and transnational public-private partnership processes. These global networks are complex but help states and non-state actors to cooperate in attaining national, regional, and global development outcomes bordered on the security of states and the welling of their people. Third, the study found out that official development assistance (ODA) has been one of the functions of international cooperation, and that it has helped developing countries to attain some development benefits. The research concludes that there is a need to enhance international cooperation by enhancing diplomacy and ensuring that states and non-state actors further commit and fulfill the principles of global partnership as enshrined in goal 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals and that the developed world must assist developing countries to achieve economic growth and build strong institutions for sustainable development as required under SDG16 on the one hand, while developing countries themselves must take concrete steps to radically end extreme poverty and pursue the path to sustainable development on the other.
Keywords: Diplomacy, Development cooperation; Economic Cooperation, multilateralism; Sustainable development.
